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Saturday, 5 September 2015

Making an album, part 7: How not to write a song for Shania Twain

A few years ago, I was asked to provide some material for an up-and-coming young female country singer. A
friend in the business who was familiar with my writing style (I was going to
use the phrase ‘writing prowess’ there, but that would have been a bit of an exaggeration)
thought that I might have some songs which -given the right treatment- could
have worked for this particular vocalist. My name was passed to the singer’s
manager, who also happened to be her mother. After a perfunctory phone call (“I’ve been told you write songs. We’re
looking for songs”), an appointment was made for us to meet. I packed my
guitar and notebook and drove out to a big house in the country, about a mile
and half from the middle of nowhere.

Upon my arrival, it was made clear
that the singer’s mum /manager (let’s call her The Mumager) was the director of
operations. I was led into a room that could have passed for a middle-sized function
suite (complete with its own stage) and it was explained that I would be auditioning
my songs to her before she decided if the enterprise was to proceed beyond first
base. I’m being polite here when I say that she was not the kind of person who
liked to waste time with idle chit-chat. Inasmuch as I had expected anything, I
thought that I would at least have met the singer before introducing her to the
songs which, in my head at least, had ‘surprise country smash’ written all over
them, but the daughter was -as yet- nowhere to be seen. The Mumager, with a
small hand gesture, invited me to take the stage and perform. She positioned
herself on a chair a few feet from the raised platform and, from that distance,
looked like the smallest and possibly the toughest audience I would ever have
to play to. There was no point in trying to crack a joke to ease the tension,
because the meagre conversational scraps of our opening exchanges had made it
obvious that my sense of humour and hers had about as much in common as scrap
metal and scrambled eggs.

Mindful of that ever-useful
mnemonic beloved of all performers (TNT MAFFOY – ‘Try Not To Make a Fucking Fool
of Yourself’), I had come prepared with a number of possible contenders for the
surprise country hit of the year. I assumed that The Mumager’s idea of country
music would have been based on songs she had heard played by proper country
musicians. As I’ve stated in some previous articles, I’m not a particularly
gifted musician, let alone a gifted country musician. My playing style, such as
it is, could best be described as ‘tipsy welterweight’; I don’t really do
finesse and, rather than tease a melody out of a guitar or piano, I’m more
naturally equipped to bludgeon the instrument with some ham-fisted chords. Accordingly,
I figured that each song would require an eloquent preamble; rather than let The
Mumager judge my songs on what she was about to hear, I needed her to judge
them on what I imagined they could
be, given a bit of investment and finesse. Before essaying the first strum on each
song, I tried to explain how a recorded version might sound, given the proper backing.
Imagine, if you will, Woody Allen trying to talk his way out of being whacked
by one of Tony Soprano’s henchmen; that is more or less how my song pitches
were delivered.

“This one could turn out to
be a bit like Shania Twain, if we arrange it properly” I heard myself saying.
Somewhere in the background, a clock ticked. Slowly.

There was little to glean
from The Mumager’s inscrutable expression, although as the audition went on, I began
to suspect that my preambles were going down about as well an attempt to get
her to buy into a time-share in a beaten-up caravan in Arbroath. I introduced
another song. “This one would sound a bit country if we added some pedal steel”
I said, probably sounding a bit feeble. Or, now that I think about it, actually sounding feeble. In my
experience, one of the biggest mistakes a songwriter can make is to let people
hear something that isn’t finished; where the songwriter can hear the glorious possibilities
of embellishment, imaginings of beautiful harmonies, echoes of eloquent
guitars, the layperson just hears whatever is placed in front of them.

As I ran through my various
would-be country classics, The Mumager said nothing, although she did nod her
head occasionally. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but,
given her almost complete lack of chat, facial expression or interpretable body
language, I chose to take any occasional nod as a positive sign; perhaps,
inside, she was all cartwheels, laughter and pure country joy. Five songs (and five rather laboured
explanations) later, the audition was over. The Mumager said “We’ll do number
three”. And that was it; the first part of our business had been conducted,
leaving me glad that the pool of sweat on the stage beneath me had not been
deposited in vain.

The daughter was called
through from the west wing and we were finally introduced. I played the song for
her and –thankfully- she seemed to like it. We ran through it a few times until
we found the right key for her and, before I left, I gave her a handwritten
copy of the lyric to practise with. A few weeks later, we were in the studio
recording a decent version of the song but, sadly, it didn’t turn out to be a surprise
country hit; this, I realise, has been a recurring theme in my musical career.

Of the five songs I pitched
that night, one had seemed to me like a stand-out candidate (and it wasn’t
number three). I had the feeling at the time that they would (and should) have
picked song number four: ‘Read my Lips’.

Like the vast majority of
songs that I write, this had started with some chords on a guitar or piano,
before I improvised a vocal melody over the top. Only after that initial
‘brainstorming’ phase would I have considered a subject matter, a title and
some words to suit the mood that had been set by the basic components I had already
put in place. As I played around with the chord sequence and melody, I had not
only pictured someone like Shania Twain singing it, I also had the distinct
feeling that it would somehow have suited a lyric with a universal theme. With,
however, no pressing need to finish it, the song was filed away in my
burgeoning ‘one-day-I-might-do-something-with-this’ file. Once I had accepted the
assignment to try and write a hit for someone, it seemed like an obvious choice.
I drafted, tweaked and re-drafted the lyric several times until it felt just right.
I imagined a tight rocking band delivering the backing with some real torch and
twang, while Shania belted out an empowering lyric along the lines of my-man-gone-done-me-wrong-so-he-can-sling-his-hook-and-I’ll-be-just-fine.

I thought that the tune was
catchy and that the universal theme gave it some extra hit potential, but with my
modest track record I don’t suppose many folk would see the percentage in
betting on that. The Mumager was unmoved by the song (and my sales pitch), so ‘Read
my Lips’ was consigned to the ‘pending’ file.

Writing a pop lyric presents
a different kind of challenge and is, in some ways, harder than writing
something just to please yourself (which is what I usually do).It’s quite easy to write
lyrics, but it’s rather more difficult to write good lyrics and, in my experience, even harder to write good lyrics
for someone else.

A few years ago, I was in a
band in which I had to write for another young female vocalist. She had a
lovely voice, she looked the part and she had some pretty good ideas of her
own, but her lyric-writing pace could best be described as ‘sluggish’ and I often
had to push matters along in order to get new material into our set. A man in
his forties composing for a woman in her twenties was not necessarily a recipe
for insightful writing and, in my desire to increase the band’s productivity, I
tended to steer very firmly to the lyrical middle of the road, drafting lines that
were, for want of a better term, generic.

I’m not saying that there’s
anything wrong with generic lyrics, but –sooner or later- you’ll find that
you’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name and it’ll feel good to
be out of the rain; or, as is more likely, nobody will have a clue what you’re talking
about. I know that for some writers, this is actually something like a state of
bliss. It is often the case (for a variety of reasons) that songwriters don’t
particularly wish to be understood and plenty of folk have sustained entire careers
on being vague and evasive in their songs.

Perhaps one of the reasons
that Coldplay –to take but one example- have sold so many albums is that, in addition
to the fact that their music is relatively easy on the ear, their words are
usually just vague enough to have a broad appeal.

Take the lyrics to ‘Yellow’:

Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do,
Yeah, they were all yellow.

I came along,
I wrote a song for you,
And all the things you do,
And it was called "Yellow".

So then I took my turn,
Oh what a thing to have done,
And it was all yellow.

Your skin Oh yeah your skin and bones,
Turn into something beautiful,
You know, You know I love you so,
You know I love you so.

What does that even mean? I’d
suggest that the answer is ‘nothing’; or maybe it’s everything. These lyrics
are so vague that any notion of meaning is conferred entirely by the listener.
‘Yellow’ can mean whatever you want it to mean, which in pop music terms,
probably makes it a good (that is, commercially appealing) lyric.

Take, by way of contrast,
Joni Mitchell’s ‘Song for Sharon’. Here’s the opening few lines:

I went to Staten Island, Sharon.
To buy myself a mandolin
And I saw the long white dress of love
On a storefront mannequin
Big boat chuggin' back with a belly full of cars...
All for something lacy
Some girl's going to see that dress
And crave that day like crazyOn a storefront mannequin

In addition to delineating a
very personal and perceptive observation, these lines prepare the listener for the
complex subject matter of the song. In exploring the idea of the path not taken,
‘Song for Sharon’ compares Joni Mitchell’s life -that of a successful musician-
with that of a friend who has “a husband, a family and a farm”.

Mitchell acknowledges
the powerful attraction of that “long white dress of love” (and all that it
implies) then reflects on the lifestyle choices she has made in pursuing her muse.
The lyric explores the tension between, on the one hand, her need to create art
and, on the other, the desire for love, constancy and security.

In the final
lines, she sings:

But
you still have your musicAnd I've still got my eyes on the land and the skyYou sing for your friends and your familyI'll walk green pastures by and by

This is open to interpretation,
but not in the same way that ‘Yellow’ is open to interpretation. Where ‘Yellow’
trusts the imagination of the listener to sprinkle some fairy dust over its
prosaic phrasing, ‘Song for Sharon’ probes the complexity of big life choices.
In laying out the consequences, regrets and rewards of opting for the life of a
musical free spirit and rejecting the role of wife and mother, Mitchell
sketches her ambivalence so skilfully that, by the end the song, we’re not
really sure which woman has got the best deal.

There is no right way or
wrong way to compose a lyric, but ‘Song for Sharon’ is clearly the work of a
poet, while ‘Yellow’ could easily have been written by someone employed to
churn out greeting cards for Walmart. I’d love to sit at Joni’s end of the song-writing
table, but it’s a very long table and the reality is that I’m way down at the
other end, using the wrong cutlery, knocking over the condiments and trying not
to slurp my soup. But at least the songs on my album will make a series of
statements that I’ll be reasonably happy to make. And, although ‘Read my Lips’ may
have been written with the specific aim of having a hit by putting words into
someone else’s mouth, it’s still something that I’m proud of. If I hadn’t had
to audition this song, I might never have gotten around to finishing it. The
discipline of pulling it all together, the imagining
of Shania Twain performing it, improved me as a writer.

The Mumager might not have
cared much for my material, but her daughter is now doing very well for herself
on the Irish country circuit; by the sounds of it, she wanted something closer
to old-school country than I could provide. My recorded version of the song is
very close to what I had in mind when I wrote it. The band (Les, Fraser and
Peter) absolutely nailed the arrangement, with Peter’s country-tinged guitar,
in particular, bang on the money for the mood I wanted to create.

On the subject of the album, work
is now moving into the closing stages. I’ve recorded around 50 pieces of music
and they currently sit in three distinct piles, each of which will hopefully
see the light of day pretty soon.

More will be revealed shortly,
but -just to be on the safe side- I have left instructions in my will that, in
the event of my sudden death, the entire body of work should be performed at
Hampden Park with a 60-piece orchestra, a male voice choir and Shania Twain on
lead vocals.

And, if we can swing it with
her management, I’d like her to be dressed as Catwoman.

About Me

A few years ago, I promised that I would never start a blog; this is it.
On this blog, I plan to respond to real (or imagined) slights by posting coruscating put-downs of my enemies, competitors and -occasionally- friends. I also plan to maintain the acrimonious simmering of a series of longstanding grudges and petty disputes.
But mainly, the blog will faithfully record a pointless and pedestrian series of idle musings, attempted libels and ill-considered theories about popular culture, sport, politics, music and the meaning of life.
For the last couple of years, I've been writing about an album I'm recording; yes, it's nearly finished.
The views represented on this blog are not necessarily endorsed by the author, unless they are.